Huang rose triumphantly. “There you are. You yourself have created a new sun and a new moon. You could do the same for all other things.” He tossed his head proudly and looked round the company.
Ricci sought for a way to reveal the ambiguity. Finally he said, “That image in the mind is not the sun or moon, but a copy only: there is a great difference between the two. For if we had not first seen the sun and moon, we should be unable to form that copy or imagine it, much less create the actual sun and moon.”
Neither Huang nor the other guests seemed able to grasp an argument so opposed to both idealism and naïve realism. Ricci gave an illustration.
“Take a shining surface for instance. When it is placed opposite the sun or the moon, it reflects those planets. But no one would claim that the surface creates the sun and the moon or the other objects it reflects.”
This the guests understood and approved, but Huang grew angry and in a loud voice began to declaim his idealist theories. Fearing discourtesy, their host Li came up and gently drew him to another part of the room.
When all the guests had arrived, they were invited into the banqueting hall, a long room furnished with pictures, vases of flowers and antique cabinets. Some twenty-five tables, four feet long and three wide, were set in a line. The uncovered tops gleamed with glossy varnish, the sides were hung with silk to the floor. At each stood a chair, carved and varnished and decorated with gold figures. The guests having gathered at the threshold, Li filled a silver bowl with wine and placing it on a silver salver bowed deeply to Ricci. Going into the courtyard he faced south and poured out the wine on the ground as an offering to Heaven. Then he came back, placed another bowl on the salver, and again bowed to Ricci, who accompanied him to the place of honour in the centre of the line of tables. He set the bowl on Ricci’s table, carefully arranged beside it ebony eating-sticks tipped with gold and dusted the adjacent chair. Returning to the centre of the room he bowed and escorted each guest in turn to his table with similar courtesy. Then Ricci, as guest of honour, escorted Li to a table facing his own and the others. Each of the guests in turn approached and with both hands arranged the table, the chair and the sticks, as though to set them even more conveniently, while Li stood aside with a deprecating gesture. Having bowed to each other, all the company then took their places. Following Li’s example they raised their bowls, small as nutshells, in both hands and sipped wine together. The drink, mild as beer, was served warm—one of the explanations, Ricci believed, of Chinese longevity. When the goblets were emptied, the first course of food was carried in, each guest being provided with a separate dish. All the company raised their sticks in their right hands, like an orchestra waiting for the first beat of the conductor’s baton, then, following Li’s movements, lowered them slowly so that all touched their food at precisely the same moment. Meat and fish were served in no apparent order, mixed with herbs and bamboo shoots and cooked in sesame oil without rice, all cut up so as to be daintily eaten.
After a few minutes, at a signal from Li, all laid down their sticks to resume drinking and conversation. The graduates began to discuss an age-old question, whether human nature by itself is good, bad or indifferent. Ricci listened to the arguments: one said, if human nature is evil, whence comes the good men do; another, if good, whence comes the evil; a third, if it is neither good nor evil, who teaches man to perform right and wrong? As the Chinese received no training in rigorous logic, and made no distinction between moral and natural good, the argument turned in circles for over an hour. As Ricci remained silent, the guests thought the conversation was beyond him. Finally Li politely asked whether he had anything to say. Ricci, who had been waiting for this opportunity, first summarised their arguments, then said, “All of us here will agree that the Lord of Heaven and earth is in the highest degree good. If human nature is so feeble that it doubts whether its own self is good or evil, how can the honourable Huang be correct when he maintains (as he did not long ago) that human nature is the same as God, creator of Heaven and earth? If it were the same, it surely could not doubt its own goodness?”
A young graduate turned to Huang. “What answer do you give?”
Huang smiled superciliously, as though Ricci’s words were unworthy of attention. But Ricci and the others insisted that he should answer. Finally he burst out with a torrent of quotations from the Buddhist scriptures, to the admiration of the whole company.
When he had finished, Ricci said, “I do not believe the religion you profess, and therefore your quotations have no force for me. I too could bring forward authorities from my religion. I purposely refrained from doing so because this evening our discussion is based on reason.”
But Huang continued to dogmatise, concluding that although something which was good could also be evil, God was neither the one nor the other.
On these points Ricci challenged him. “The sun,” he said, “is light and cannot be dark, for its proper nature is to be light. Similarly the Lord of Heaven, whose nature it is to be good, cannot be responsible for evil.”
Then he went on to distinguish between substance and accidents. Imbued with Buddhist mysticism, Huang was not prepared to admit either that being and non-being were mutually exclusive or that the nature of the highest good must be simple. Taking not marbled substance but the shifting nature of man as his norm, he believed in a universe made up of contradictory principles: man was both good and bad; the year both warm and cold; God therefore must combine in himself similar opposites. To Aristotle’s clear-cut world of sun and shade he opposed a moonlit masquerade of subtle moods and indefinable spiritual change, where everything altered from hour to hour even to the same observer. Unable to agree about first principles and working from different basic analogies, the poet bonze and the Far Westerner remained, as lamps were lit and gleamed on the varnished tables, a world apart.
Until the early hours of the morning the talk continued, growing more excited and less to the point as goblets were filled and refilled. Dish after dish was brought in and, since none was removed, they stood piled up on each table like miniature castles. The guests ate moderately, the entertainment being more a symposium than a banquet and friends “men who drink together.” Ricci eschewed the best dishes. At Nanchang he had discovered that the Christian manner of fasting was considered not in the least penitential, for Buddhists dispensed with meat, fish, eggs, milk, butter and cheese. He was not obliged to adopt the stricter form—indeed he felt tempted not to, for he was a hearty eater and, as his life became busier, stood in need of large meals. But he made the sacrifice, and ate only rice and vegetables on Fridays, Sundays and during Lent.
Though the rice-wine was mild, so long did the banquet last that when the party broke up, servants had to assist some of the guests as they staggered to waiting sedans.
The story of the dispute spread through Nanking, and most people believed Ricci had got the better of the argument. Few, however, understood his scholastic theory of perception, and it was rumoured that the Far Westerner carried in his breast the heaven of heavens and had eyes which permitted him to see other worlds beyond the earth.
Shortly afterwards Ricci’s friendship was sought by another poet-bonze, one of the most original and famous authors of China, at that time an old man of seventy-two. Some twenty years earlier he had abandoned a brilliant official career in order to devote himself to Buddhism. First he had tried to reconcile his creed with Confucianism, then, discarding all human learning, had turned to contemplation. He admired Ricci’s book on Friendship and although usually too arrogant to pay courtesy calls, he surprised his disciples by going in person to visit the foreigner, presenting him with a fan on which he had inscribed one of his finest poems. Fans, carried by everyone, men and women, rich and poor, no matter what the weather, corresponded as objects of elegance to the gloves of European gentlemen. Frames might be of bamboo, wood, ebony or ivory, the material of paper, silk or cloth, the shape round, square or oval. Among graduates the most prized form was the se
mi-circular, pliable fan, bearing a moral sentence or poem inscribed on its wing. It formed the usual gift between friends. The poet-bonze’s lines were addressed to the Westerner Li:
Like a stork, now you fly towards the mists of the north,
And now direct your course towards the regions of the south.
Above every high pole of the pagodas your name unfurls
And every mountain recounts your storm-tossed voyage by sea.
Turning your head, you gaze back on ten times ten thousand li,
And, raising your eyes, before you see the empyrean city,
You marvel at the splendour of the country in its zenith,
While the sun blazes down in full meridian.
Ricci had already given and received a great number of inscribed fans, but few of their verses could compare with this poem, remarkable for its sense of space and the subtle portrait of Ricci as astronomer and man of God.
At the beginning of May Cattaneo arrived from Lintsing with Brother Sebastian, to Ricci’s profound relief. For five months now he had remained alone, not in comparative quiet as at Shiuchow, but every hour of the day and much of the night meeting the most intelligent men of China, powerful mandarins and influential Buddhists, sustaining alone wave after wave of argument, scientific, religious, magical, jeopardising his integrity for love. Now at last he was able to speak with someone who shared his principles and loyalties, speak a common language, leave the asylum where his religious beliefs were treated as curious delusions, find assurance and support. He welcomed Cattaneo, too, as the surest corrective to that creeping, insidious pride which lay within the pleats of his purple robes, as despair had been associated with the bonze’s ash-grey cloak. The greatest mandarins hailed him as one of the sages of China, a prodigy of learning, and gravely repeated his obiter dicta: he could smile, he could repeat prayers of humility, but not every unworthy thought could be repressed. Yet he knew that all depended on the opposite virtues, China’s salvation as well as his own, for when the novelty of Western learning wore off, when his astrolabes and quadrants were no longer one of the sights, only that would remain to turn the scale. It was good, therefore, that Cattaneo knew all his mathematics had been learned from the so much more eminent Clavius; it was good, when he described his by now famous controversy, to be told that he had used quite the wrong arguments against Huang.
It seemed feasible now to buy a house, but although he had looked at many Ricci could find none that satisfied him. In May, however, he received a visit from an official of the Ministry of Public Works who had taken Ricci’s part in certain religious disputes.
“I have heard,” he said, “that you are searching for a house. Two years ago I had a large mansion with about twenty rooms built for officials of my Ministry. As soon as it was finished, ghosts and spirits began to appear. Several graduates who tried to live in it were frightened almost to death. No one could be persuaded to stay there, so I decided to dispose of it, first at cost price, then for even less, but as you can well understand, no one will buy a haunted house. I have been thinking—you are a holy man, and so demons and ghosts cannot harm you. If you want the house you may have it.”
“I’m afraid so large a building would be beyond our means,” said Ricci.
“Don’t let that worry you. I will accept what you care to pay. The Ministry will be only too pleased to get rid of it.”
There and then the official took him to see the house, number three in the Street named Ceremonial Rites, in the best quarter of the city, near the imperial palace. It proved to be more suitable than any Ricci had been shown by house agents and was built on high ground, an important factor in a city so liable to floods. It would be large enough for ten missionaries, and it was a measure of his new confidence that Ricci did not consider the size excessive. The official offered to sell it at half cost price, but as the missionaries were short of money, he agreed to wait for half the payment until the following year. In three days negotiations were completed and on May the twenty-fourth the house was theirs. They sprinkled the rooms with holy water and replaced the pictures of devils, drawn with black ink on yellow paper, which Taoist priests had set up to exorcise the house, with a painting of Christ. They took possession and continued to live there without losing their wits, to the astonishment of all Nanking.
With a base firmly established, Ricci now made plans to reach his ultimate goal, Peking, for he believed that peace in Korea would prove lasting and make it possible to win the Emperor’s ear. Money and further gifts were sought from Macao. These reached Nanking in March of the new century which, with new hopes, had been born from the dying year. At the same time Ricci was joined by another missionary, Diego Pantoja, a serious young man of twenty-nine with sharp iron-grey eyes, the first Spaniard to work in China.
That spring saw the publication of the second edition of Ricci’s map of the world, prepared at the request of a friend, secretary to the Ministry of Civil Appointments, a circular projection twice the size of the one he had made sixteen years before. Ricci added the peninsula of Korea, absent from the Flemish maps which had been the basis of his first edition. For clearness’ sake, the parallels were omitted; according to Chinese convention the sea was represented by formalised waves instead of dots, and for the first time a phoneticised equivalent for Europe appeared. In an elegant preface the secretary wrote: “Tradition has it that the south-eastern chain of the Kunlun Shan runs into the Middle Kingdom: hence all the rivers flow east. But no one has been able to map the north-western chain. . . . We know the frontiers of the Middle Kingdom: it is bounded to the south-east only by sea, to the west by the Kunlun Shan, to the north by the Gobi. But what of the frontiers of the world? Experience shows it to be quite small, whereas speculation suggests it may be vast. Both views are false. The Westerner Li, who has come from the continent named Europe, has published a Complete Map of Mountains and Seas, which he has presented to graduates, and many copies of which have circulated. I have studied it and found it has been compiled with the help of old books published in his country. In fact his fellow-countrymen and the Portuguese love long voyages. Whenever they pass through distant regions, they write about them and hand on their discoveries from generation to generation. Having through the years accumulated observations, they know the general shape of the earth, apart from the regions of the south pole, still unexplored.
“This graduate preacher is a modest man, not bent on gain; he is content to practise virtue and to honour Heaven. Morning and evening he resolves to avoid unkindness in thought, word and deed. Although his theories about the sun, moon and stars are difficult to understand, until more learned men than I are able to verify them I shall continue to believe that they are based on sound evidence.” The map was printed at the Ministry’s expense: it proved immensely popular and other blocks soon had to be cut for new impressions.
This success increased his friends’ desire to lend Ricci all possible assistance. Although the palace eunuchs had usurped many of its functions, the Ministry of Rites—embracing the three fields of religion, education and foreign affairs—was still officially responsible for the presentation of gifts from foreigners. The Censor, fearing also lest he be accused of failing to expedite the Western curios, was only too glad to help Ricci on his journey to Peking. In the late spring he took the initiative in providing a passport, made out exactly as Ricci wished, as well as letters of recommendation to friends in the northern capital.
Ricci succeeded in renting two rooms on board a fast boat sailing for Peking, part of a convoy of five carrying silk to the Emperor. The captain, a eunuch, refused payment for the cabins, because Ricci was a friend of the Censor—a favour he was able to repay by obtaining for the captain carrying-trade worth double the fare. As a farewell present Ricci gave the Censor the large prism which had been left at his palace and which even he considered a very precious jewel. On May the nineteenth, in company with Pantoja and Brother Sebastian, Ricci embarked. The great Censor, their other friends, and
the small group of Christians Ricci had baptised during the past year came to the boat to wish the travellers a peaceful journey.
chapter eight
Prisoners of the Eunuch
Impelled by love and the need for propagation of the faith, a second time Ricci leapt the falls along five hundred miles of water. Chinkiang, Yangchow, Hwaian, the stages were familiar now, his movements no longer surreptitious. He received continual visits from officials travelling to the capital, and at Tsining in Shantung province stayed a few days with the Commissioner of Rice Transport, whose son he had come to know in Nanking. This great mandarin gave him letters of recommendation and revised the draft of a memorial he had drawn up for the Emperor.
The eunuch was pleased with his passengers: not only had they done him a good turn and consorted with high dignitaries, but their presence helped at the lock gates, where tribute-bearing and official boats always had right of way. He would invite other captains to see Ricci’s presents, then, in return, receive permission to go ahead of them.
At the beginning of July, under the first phases of the Lotus Moon, their ship approached the outskirts of Lintsing. Ricci viewed the town with anxiety, for he had heard not only from Cattaneo, who had personal experience, but from the Censor and other friends about a certain Ma T’ang, who as Collector of Taxes at Lintsing had acquired a notorious reputation. During the Korean War, in 1596, the Emperor had dispatched eunuchs throughout the country, first to discover and develop gold and silver mines, secondly to collect a new two-per-cent sales tax. Two or three eunuchs were assigned to each province with almost unlimited powers, exempt from the jurisdiction of local mandarins. Increased power of eunuchs was a classic symptom of a declining dynasty, but in few other periods had they shown themselves so ruthless. They conspired to make all the money they could; in the words of official complaints “they sucked the marrow and drank the people’s blood,” yet not a tenth part reached the exchequer. Those who had been ordered to mine gold operated not in the mountains, where gold had formerly been discovered, but in the cities. Selecting a wealthy man’s house, they claimed it stood over a profitable seam, and proposed to destroy the building in order to obtain the metal. Only by paying an enormous bribe could the owner retain his home. Some cities and provinces, to be rid of such depredations, had decided to pay an annual sum to the eunuchs, as “money from the mines.” The mandarins of both capitals repeatedly informed the Emperor that such brutality and injustice had brought the country to the verge of revolt, but he had already begun to reap the fruits of their plunder and refused to listen. When several mandarins resisted, he even took the eunuchs’ part: many mandarins were deprived of office, some imprisoned. This increased the eunuchs’ insolence and they began to murder anyone who made a stand. None was more cunning and cruel than Ma T’ang, hated throughout China. The previous summer a mob often thousand had risen in exasperation and burnt his house, killing thirty-seven of his staff. The incident had roused him to retaliation and new excesses.
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